A frugal sewing blog: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

Cleaning Rags from Athletic Socks Tutorial

The concept of this is really easy and a great way to recycle all those holey athletic socks your guys seem to go through.
First you need 4 holey socks. Cut off the heel and toe parts.
Then cut down the tubes where the holes are, trimming to get squares/rectangles.
You may end up with one piece that is much smaller than the others.
If you only have the four socks, trim down one of your other pieces to the same size as the smaller piece. If you have plenty of socks to work with, cut another to get a similar sized piece.
So I only had the 4 socks so I ended up with two small pieces and two medium pieces. Place 2 different sized pieces fuzzy side together and sew or serge along one side.
Repeat for other pieces. Then place them both fuzzy side together and sew or serge along the outer edge leaving a 2 inch gap for turning.
Turn and stitch closed and topstitch all around.
Now that you see the easy process I can assert that these take a mere 4 minutes to make start to finish.
Now you may ask why to do this?
#1. I used to just use the socks as is for cleaning but my hubby kept trying to put the rag socks back with his good socks.
#2. These are exceptionally soft and absorbent rags. These are as thirsty as two wash cloths for cleaning up spills.
#3. They’re free.
#4. They last longer as rags than they do as socks. I have some of these going on 4 years of use in my cleaning basket. I can’t even begin to count how many paper towels I must have saved by having these.
#5. Since these are free I feel no guilt throwing them out after a particularly yucky mess. I try to grab the oldest rag in the stack for those messes.